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Gev regained consciousness slowly, his thoughts still smothered by anaesthetic. He was regaining feeling in his body piece by piece. And each of those pieces was changed.

He took a deep breath, the feeling of his nostrils taking in air now on the end of his snout. His sense of smell was stronger than ever. He could smell the metal in the bed frame, the fabric his sheets were made of, and another fabric in his gown. He could smell someone nearby too. Cheap shampoo and a bit of sweat. Probably working an extra long shift.

He took a deeper breath, and felt his chest rise and fall. The muscular enhancement had worked. His skin… No, the plates and scales on his chest were further out, his entire torso wider and thicker than before. His entire body felt heavy, but that was more from the remaining anaesthetic in his system than from the genetic modification.

Gev began to worry that something had gone wrong with the procedure. He couldn't open his eyes, couldn't move, couldn't think straight. Anxiety welled up inside him as he laid helpless on the bed.

Would walking be easy? How would others react to him? Would he be harassed? Would his family finally cut ties? Worries swirled in his mind until the drugs won out and darkness swallowed him again.

He woke again some time later still groggy, but he could function now. He opened his eyes for the first time and yawned, pushing the sheets off himself. He ran his clawed hands over his muzzle briefly, before giving a small start upon noticing the nurse in the room with him.

"Ah, finally awake? Good, we'd have to charge you if you stayed another hour. Uh, sorry!" The nurse gave him an apologetic grin before ducking her head into her tablet and scribbling something down. "Anyway, you're free to go. Clean bill of health!" Was that a touch of anxiety in her voice?

"Mm, right." Gev sat up, noticing his belongings on a side table next to him. He eyed the nurse, conscious of undressing in front of her, but she was already scurrying out of the room. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he stood slowly. His feet… His paws? They were wide, and felt oddly strong. Huge clawed toes afforded easy purchase on the slick tiled floor. He had to be careful not to dig gouges in it as he moved about. What a strange thing to have to worry about, he thought.

Even so, he relished every moment of the experience. His drug addled anxieties from earlier washed away as he took in each new sensation. Then he wobbled and nearly fell, catching himself on the bed as he instinctively tried to stand as a normal human would; on their feet, rather than on their toes. He took a breath, got distracted for a moment at all the strange scents in the room, then stood up again on his toes this time with his claws spread wide under his weight. In moments standing felt natural, as if he'd been walking this way his entire life.

The neural retraining seemed to have worked, but he'd have to be careful not to undo that work by reverting back to ordinary human instincts. Rewiring the brain this way was the fastest way to adapt to more significant gene mods, but the brain could easily revert back so soon after the procedure if you weren't careful.

He took a breath, looking around the room. Everything felt small. The height modification together with now standing up on his toes totalled nearly a foot in extra height. Those extra inches of height made the entire world feel different, as though the world had been changed along with him somehow.

The small recovery room had a hospital bed, the side table with his new clothing, a window overlooking the busy downtown plaza, a small bathroom, and the door leading to the rest of the recovery wing. He could hear voices outside, much more clearly than he'd expected. Gev remembered paying for the enhanced hearing, not just cosmetic ear modifications, but the actual experience of hearing a conversation down the hall outside his room was still jarring.

"…make all that money doing coding or whatever and spend it on… Turning into a lizard? God, I don't understand people these days." A female voice said. The nurse from earlier?

Someone slurped a drink loudly in response. Well, loudly to his enhanced hearing. "Oh come on, is it really that big of a deal? Fuckin psychos come in buying super strength, hidden weapons, fuckin poison spit and shit and you wanna rag on someone for wanting to look like a dragon or whatever? Who the fuck cares!" An older male voice.

"He did get muscular enhancement! And… shit, a hearing upgrade." High heeled footsteps receded quickly down the hallway, followed by a deep chuckle from the man.

Gev shook his head, then undid the ties on the back of his hospital gown. He tossed it onto the bed, and stopped when he saw himself. He'd felt the extra muscle beneath the gown, but seeing it was something else. Before the procedure he was decidedly average. He worked out here and there, but never enough to gain much weight. Now he was jacked. He'd seen bigger bodybuilders, and certainly people much larger with gene mods. Even so, gaining around 50 pounds of muscle all at once looked and felt amazing.

He flexed his arm, watched how his scales flowed and parted slightly to accommodate the muscle beneath. His gaze ran up the scales on his arm up to his hand, now tipped with sharp slate grey claws. He then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it with a sigh, smiling to himself. Finally, he felt right. This was how his body was supposed to be. Strength, scales, claws, tail, teeth. It all felt exactly as it should be.

A sudden shock of pain jolted his head, radiating out in an instant through his entire body, and then was gone just as quickly. He fell to one knee, grabbing the bed for balance, and took a deep slow breath to calm himself. What was that? Mods sometimes came with side effects, and he felt a small bubble of anxiety, worried that the accompanying modifications to his brain had gone wrong somehow. He sat down and waited for a few minutes, breathing slowly, calming himself, and waiting to see if it would return.

It did not. All that remained with him was an odd fading sensation of being watched. He glanced up at one of the cameras up in the corner of the room, then remembered he was still naked. Surely they wouldn't be staring at him through those, would they? He sighed, shook his head, and picked up the still newly packaged underwear from the side table. He sliced open the plastic with a claw. D_amn helpful that_, he thought as he put them on. A size larger than his old boxers, but they fit comfortably.

He dressed quickly, saving the four-toed waterproof boots for last. These sorts of mods were so new he was surprised to find an already thriving, albeit small industry centered around providing quality footwear to modified individuals like himself. They were surprisingly comfortable, with reinforced pads at the tips of his claws that should last a good while, and a good bit of flex on each toe to help with balance.

Collecting his old clothing, Gev left the room behind. He walked slowly at first, still getting used to walking on his toes, and in shoes no less. It didn't take long before the motion felt natural though.

He turned the corner and saw an older man sipping coffee and reading the days news on his tablet. He was shocked for a moment at just how far from the room he was. Gev was sure this was the man he'd heard talking to the nurse moments ago. Could he really hear entire conversations from so far off? The man looked up and gave a small knowing smirk before returning to his reading. Gev realized he was staring, and shook his head before moving further down the hall.

An elevator was just about to leave and he ducked inside, only to bash his head against something as he did so with a loud CLANG. He looked back at the doors with annoyance and noticed two dents in the top of the elevator doors. He'd ducked just enough to clear his head, but had forgotten to make room for his horns and had smashed them into the door frame… On the bright side it didn't hurt, and the dents were soon hidden by the closing doors.

There was a middle aged man and woman inside. The man looked at him with shock plain on his face, then gulped and looked very deliberately at the elevator doors and not at Gev. The woman, his wife probably, had the telltale glow of ocular implants playing a video for her. She looked quite distracted by what she saw, despite him making a spectacle of himself. Gev was surprised yet again to see that his enhanced vision could see not just the inverted images on the surface of her eyes, but he could actually read the headline at the bottom of the minuscule screen.

The elevator soon came to rest at the lobby, and the man hurried out with the woman following more slowly behind. Gev followed behind through the large waiting room. There were at least fifty people here either waiting for their own modifications, or waiting for someone else to come out of the operating room. Humanitech Genetic Modification Facility #12 was a massive structure. Over forty levels dedicated purely to performing genetic modifications of all scales.

This was just one of several waiting rooms on the ground floor. Most of the people here would be getting simple mods for nullifying genetic problems, reversing aging, treating illness, improving their quality of life, their looks, preventing cancers, and many other treatments.

Modifications like Gev's were much more rare though. There was one woman in the corner who'd already transformed herself into something resembling a grey wolf, perhaps here to receive corrective treatments for unexpected complications resulting from having so many mods. There was another man who could be described only as unnaturally beautiful. His face simply flawless in every way, and he was probably here to pursue further perfection, if such a thing could be achieved. Everyone else looked unremarkable though.

Gev walked toward the door and saw a couple people look at him strangely, but that was it. People like him were not common, but certainly less threatening than people with obviously dangerous mods or cybernetic enhancements. Cybernetics had largely fallen out of fashion in recent years in flavor of gene mods, however.

The receptionist at the desk near the door gave him a warm smile as he passed. Gev tried to smile back, but noticed the glow in her eyes and couldn't help but look. In it he saw a reflection of the room behind him, but where he should be there was an ordinary human face. Not his old face. Just a generic, ordinary, average human face. He turned away from her before the disgust could show on his face. She could use AIER to edit him out of her reality if she wanted, but he wouldn't be polite to her for it.

Gev passed through the doors and out into the rain soaked evening. He purposefully tossed his old clothing into the trash bin next to the door. It felt oddly symbolic, like he was throwing away the old version of himself, a snake shedding it's old skin. He was surprised to feel a touch of disdain in that moment for his old self. He was worried that undergoing all of these modifications at once, rather than incrementally as most others did, would be a jarring or even terrifying experience. But he felt none of that.

He felt strong, purposeful, like he had done exactly the right thing, set himself on precisely the correct path. And once again, he felt watched. That worried him. It wasn't unheard of for extreme forms of genetic modification to cause psychosis or other mental illness.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself and took out his phone to hail a ride home. The car arrived in moments of tapping a few buttons in the ride aggregator and he climbed in, careful this time not to dent the car door with his horns. Easier said than done with his horns now grazing the roof when he tilted his head down too far.

The ride back to his apartment was uneventful. Gev watched the city pass by with newly sharpened eyes, but he couldn't take his mind off of those strange feelings outside the clinic. Streetlamps periodically lit the car's interior as he focused his mind and looked for that strange sensation of someone, or something watching him. Just as before in the hospital room, he felt nothing.

Before he knew it he was back at his apartment, walking up the wide walkway to the lobby. He checked the lockers for packages, and upon finding none, walked to the elevator in time to see Morris leaving. He smiled at him briefly, but was surprised for a moment when Morris didn't acknowledge him whatsoever.

As the elevator doors closed, Gev tsked at him self over his obvious mistake. Morris didn't recognize him, of course. Morris was just his neighbour, not a close friend, and didn't know anything about Gev's plans to be modded. These apartments were also fairly cheap. Most people here didn't have the money for such expensive modifications and might look down on him for them.

Gev unlocked the door to his apartment, and remembered that in his hurry to leave the Humanitech facility he hadn't actually taken the time to look at himself in the mirror. He moved slowly to his bathroom, anticipation building inside him at finally seeing his face.

The old motion activated light came on slowly as he entered, and he gasped as he met his own gaze in the mirror. Vibrant green eyes with a vertical pupil glittered back at him in the mirror. He ran a hand over his muzzle, his lips parting to reveal a row of razor sharp pointed teeth. There was nothing recognizable in the mirror from how he looked before. Mid length green hair with an almost unnatural shine, long pointed ears, two sharp slightly curled slate grey horns, dark overlapping plates on the front of his neck going down to his chest, and lighter angular scales everywhere else.

Humanitech recommended a steady increase in the complexity of genetic modifications, but Gev went against that advice. He knew deep down exactly how his body should be. What would be the point in half measures, of walking around halfway between human and dragon? As he looked at the scales on his arm, the light grey tones accented by alternating slashes of iridescent green and purple, he knew he'd made the right choice.

He clenched a fist, feeling the increased strength in his arm, and met his own green eyed gaze in the mirror once more. That sense of strength and purpose welled up once more. He smiled at his reflection, the toothy expression a bit sinister on his draconic visage. The feeling of being watched returned once again, stronger than the first two times.

The entire world seemed to shift. One moment Gev was looking at his reflection. The next, he was on the bathroom floor, gasping for air as though he'd stopped breathing for a while, disoriented. A voice whispered behind him. So quiet he couldn't make out the words. He had to close his eyes and breathe deeply before standing again. The sensation of being watched steadily faded to nothing as he did so.

Cautiously, he looked outside the bathroom for the source of the sound and found nothing. He calmed his mind and searched for that feeling of something watching him once again, and found nothing. Not just nothing, but something like an absence that wasn't there before. A subtle feeling of being alone, of there being something missing where there should be… something.

Gev slowly walked out to his small balcony, and looked out at the nighttime cityscape, listened to the rain, and looked into himself. That feeling of absence slowly receded, but didn't fully vanish. He stood there for hours, until dawn began to paint the sky a deep dark blue.

Sighing, he pushed away from the railing, went back inside, and climbed into bed. That strange feeling hadn't disappeared, but it was less now. Perhaps it would be gone when he woke…

From <https://www.sofurry.com/upload/details?contentType=0>